Butterflies Alive!

Coming from Florida, they arrive at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in the chrysalis stage. When the butterflies emerge, they are brought to the pavilion. And there are a lot of them! Visitors can wander about inside the pavilion to find different species, or they can wait for butterflies to come to them, which they often do.

The pavilion is a netted enclosure. Morning was initially overcast during my recent visit, and light within the pavilion was soft. The fog lifted later in the morning and the sun gave more contrast. All of the photographs shown here were made hand-held, and a few of them benefit from focus-stacking to achieve greater depth of field. All photographs were made with a 24-105mm zoom, most at 105mm with 12mm extension tube affixed. The results are better than I had expected.